


Hotel Horror Nights

by NorthwesternInsanity



Series: Hotel Disasters One-Shots [4]
Category: Alice Cooper - Fandom, Music RPF, Winger (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hotels, Humor, Power Outage, Recovery, Sneaking Around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-07 00:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15896817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthwesternInsanity/pseuds/NorthwesternInsanity
Summary: Paul and Reb endure a scary night at a hotel together while touring with Alice in the 90s when a power outage takes the average night's horror show beyond the stage, blurring the line between what is for show, and what might be real.





	Hotel Horror Nights

"If we're both not tired, we might as well just keep staying up and hanging out until we are," said Paul Taylor from where he lay sprawled in his bed in the hotel room. "Because if we've both been here awake in the dark for half an hour, we know it's not gonna happen."

On the bed next to him, Reb Beach was also sprawled out, flat on his back and wide awake.

There had been a traffic delay getting back from the show to the hotel, and Reb and Paul had done everything to get to bed within an hour of arriving. Their efforts were proving to be less than helpful with neither of them able to sleep.

"Alright, that's enough." Reb sat up and turned the light switches by the beds back on.

Paul grinned playfully as he sat up. "So, did Alice manage to freak you out tonight?"

"What? No!" I just can't sleep," insisted Reb.

"Are you _sure?"_

"Paul, we've been on tour for three months. By now, I know what to expect from him!"

"Oh, I know, I'm just messing." Paul knew that Reb knew he was playing around too. It had all but become a twice a week routine in the past month that something of the sort came of not being able to sleep, whether it was on the bus or in a hotel room together.

A lot of things had changed since Paul had opted to leave Winger. Things had changed with Winger after he left, and things had changed even more with Alice Cooper since the time he'd last been playing and touring with him.

He was glad that the ability to sit up late and play around non-stop with at least one of his old bandmates to his knowledge had not changed. Even in the changed setting, and for awhile, that ability had been uncertain.

"I'm still surprised you let Alice have you let the snake climb on you when we were taking pictures on the bus."

Reb shook his head. "Let's just say that in most cases I wouldn't have a snake on me, but I don't have anything against them. And if Alice walks around with it all the time -I know he's not gonna let us do something that's gonna be a problem."

"Just wait till something happens where we have to call up a vet on tour who will deal with those," Paul groaned.

"That's one thing you don't usually have excitement from on the road -oh! Did I tell you about -no, I didn't, I wanted to tell you about something funny that happened on the bus after you weren't there, and-"

"Who was the troublemaker?" asked Paul.

"I'm actually gonna say it was Rod this time, and-"

"What?!"

The lights flickered ominously, and Reb and Paul stopped mid-sentence and held their fingers up. A faint electrical hum sounded, and they looked up to the double-sconce lamp on the wall between the beds as the light coming from it faded to weak balls of light right where the bulbs were, brightened up from there enough to send out a faint glow, and went pitch dark as a bang loud enough to rattle the huge window cut through the quiet of the night.

Paul gasped.

"Whoa!" Reb yelped in the dark. "Holy potatoes!"

"Holy potatoes," Paul snickered, cracking up at the expression he hadn't heard Reb use in so long -which was something Reb had said even back in the 80s as something he held onto from childhood. "I guess that's not good. That was a transformer blowing up."

"Hope nobody was in the elevator," Reb murmured, reaching down beside his bed for his overnight bag in the dark, his story forgotten.

"It's a good thing this is at 4:00 in the morning, so only people like us and night staff would be up to get stuck in it," said Paul, "and we're not stuck."

"We still have to hope that didn't reset the phones and cancel our wakeup call. Alice has enough to get ready in the morning for us without having to get us up." Reb drew his flashlight from his bag and switched it on. _"There."_

"It's probably gonna work out fine. It's not like Alice is gonna get upset for something out of our control." Paul reached for his own flashlight, but by the time he got it out of his bag, his eyes had adjusted to the dark enough that he didn't really need it. With Reb pointing his up at the ceiling, the light reflected downward, lighting up the hotel room just as well as a small fire could lighten a campsite.

"I like these flashlights Alice gave us for the bus -they're actually really nice," Reb murmured at just above a whisper.

With the drop in volume, Paul could tell that Reb wasn't really talking to anyone, just rambling. Sometimes it was nerves, and sometimes it was just sorting out where he was and what he thought about it. Though it was the result of many a good thing, the more constant playing around and conversation in Winger had led to less opportunities for Reb to go onto one of his self-directed rambles. Paul had found it in him to appreciate the periods of isolation and quiet upon rejoining Alice for that, as he'd gotten to hear Reb make some pretty interesting observations and talk to a number of inanimate objects as if they could understand what he was saying and had feelings. 

Amusing, sure. Paul had plenty experience of drawing blood from his lip trying to keep from laughing at Reb and embarrassing him. However, coming to expect it again over time, he could find it soothing too. Reb's exterior -a forced bravado built to balance on top of a nervous train one unexpected turn away from a wreck -left him all but constantly seeking approval and priding himself on his accomplishments. It didn't often leave room for how surprisingly innocent Reb could seem. He could go from making some of the dirtiest jokes that were surprising enough to come out of him, to gently talking to a geometric form lamp on the hotel room desk as he examined it. Just as he had an hour ago arriving to the room.

_"You got a real unusual kind of shade on you. Doesn't really even look like a lamp. But that's not a bad thing at all. Actually, it's not what I'd think of for a design, but I really dig it. Super cool."_

"Bright, solid beam," Reb murmured to the flashlight now, pulling the telescoping joint on the handle out to narrow the beam, then compressing it to widen it all the way and distribute as much light about the room as possible. "Better than most I've seen. Out wide like this too -really does a good job of lighting up this room and not just the path on the bus. Handle's long -I like that I can reach that from the bed without getting out. A little heavier to pack for a flight -definitely would need to stay in the carry-on for commercial, or it could make a bag overweight pretty quick. A little heavy to carry, but that's okay. Not bad if you had to defend yourself with it... You could probably knock someone out. Hopefully we won't ever have to do that. I don't want to have to do that to someone. But if we did..."

It was nearly impossible for Paul to imagine Reb knocking someone out over the head with a flashlight. He'd sooner run and hide, or at least try to get off in any other passive way before getting himself in a battle. The only way Paul could see him chasing someone down with a flashlight was if they dared to make a move at anyone else he was friendly with. He knew well enough from what he'd seen before leaving Winger that anyone going after Reb personally would lead to a pity-party at most, but anyone going after him or Kip or Rod had Reb all but ready to go to war.

Paul pulled his legs in up to his chest and pressed his mouth against his kneecaps, holding his unlit flashlight in front of him and pretending to be looking it over too instead of trying not to laugh. He wanted to hear what else Reb would say before he blew it.

"...I think it's cool Alice got you all in these colors too. Red, green, and blue. Too bad the handle stores the batteries and can't be translucent." Reb held up the flashlight similar to how one would hold a baseball bat. "You'd look a lightsaber. A green lightsaber -and that would be so cool too! Of course, maybe that's a good thing you're not. Some of us might get ideas and get a little too crazy..."

Paul tried so hard to sit on his hands in the dark as a huge grin pulled his cheeks up so they hurt. But the temptation was so great, and there wasn't much else to do in the dark aside from going to bed -which was a good option, but incredibly boring.

He turned on his flashlight -a blue one -and extended it all the way out so that it shined a narrow beam on the ceiling. With it, he began tapping the outside of Reb's much wider beam.

Reb looked over to Paul in the dark, dropping his monologue. He grinned.

"Wanna _fight?"_

Paul held up his flashlight by the handle as though he really was wielding a lightsaber, and with that, Reb pulled the telescoping joint back out in his so that his beam also narrowed. Sitting on the edges of their beds, knee to knee with each other, they looked up at the ceiling and made motions in the air with their flashlights, at first without any impact and just dueling with the beams of light on the ceiling.

Just when Reb was looking up, completely captivated in it, as Paul could tell by the glazed-over look in his eyes through the faint cast of the reflection off the ceiling, he swung his flashlight forward and struck it against Reb's.

Reb flinched, hesitated, and made a cautious strike back in Paul's flashlight.

"Paul, you don't think this is gonna break these, do you?" he whispered.

"As long as you hit with the side of it, I bet it's fine," Paul decided. "Feel how heavy the metal on these is. We're not swinging them like we're gonna kill someone with it -and we're not gonna start that. It'll be fine!"

Dueling with lights on the ceiling turned into outright dueling. Paul soon found himself standing in the middle of the room at the foot of the beds as he and Reb postured while looking up at the ceiling. They tried to make their beams cross and hit each other as they tapped the flashlights together. 

Keeping track of where they were physically in relation to each other, Paul and Reb soon found was an easy thing to do. Looking up at the ceiling gave them less vision to gauge their motions, and the dark of the room took away most of the advantage their peripheral vision would have given them.

_Too bad we can't do this with Kip; he'd be really good at it,_ Paul thought to himself as he jumped and twisted around to avoid a swing Reb made at the last second, only to stumble over the shoes he'd kicked off at the foot of the bed with less than graceful thumping of his feet on the ground.

"Stop, we're gonna get called for noise," Reb wheezed, amused by how ridiculous it had looked.

"Aw, come on, Reb, we're not in shoes -how much noise could we make?"

"More than we think!" As they continued to duel both Paul and Reb looked down, lightly stamping their heels into the carpet, trying to get a feeling for how noise resistant the floor might be.

"Ouch!" laughed Paul as the end of Reb's flashlight clacked into the bony part of his wrist.

"Watch out then," said Reb.

"I can't watch out that well in the dark...!" 

Truth be told, Paul was just happy to see, or in this moment, hear Reb laughing and happy again, even if it did mean that they were fumbling around in the dark with flashlights and knocking into each other. It was a good three months into the tour, with time in the studio before that. and it hadn't been until a mere few weeks ago that Reb really began to play and joke around with Paul like the Reb Beach he'd known.

He'd been too quiet and paranoid when Alice had brought him in, and Paul didn't need to ask for details to be glad he'd gotten out of Winger on his own accord when he did. If whatever kind of implosion happened due to the negative exposure and resulting pressure had visibly traumatized Reb, it was far worse that what he did know of. Paul had dealt with some of the settling with putting the band on indefinite hiatus, but he hadn't been on the struggling ends of the last tour. 

Alice made it clear from the beginning when he took Reb in that as long as he performed his duties, he could do whatever else he pleased as long as it wasn't disrespectful to anyone or grossly stupid and dangerous. But Reb all but hid in a shell in his downtime, hanging back from joining in anything, constantly asking if he was doing everything alright, and apologizing in case he hadn't before getting the answer. He was pleading for approval as usual, but this time, he was terrified of getting attacked if he did one thing that wasn't exactly as he was expected to and couldn't trust anyone.

It was just as they were almost finished in the studio and getting ready to head out on tour that Reb began to appear like he felt safe and wouldn't end up alone with nowhere to go again. Paul had been hopeful that when they did leave, Reb would be ready to cut lose and have some fun they hadn't had together in awhile.

That was when another tragedy struck, and Kip had delivered word to Paul and Reb by phone in what was probably the most vulnerable conversation he'd had with anyone, that while they had tried to maintain contact while on hiatus, perhaps it was best they did spend some time out of contact -if nothing else to protect Reb from his grief-twisted and unpredictable state of mind.

Even with the knowledge it was best and for his protection, it hadn't made it less painful for Reb. He grieved too -whether for the separation from one tragedy following another, for the band they'd had together, for the dreams and plans they'd had that had been shattered by so many unnecessary things inflicted by other people, or something else nobody could identify. His reaction after that phone call ended was just as devastating to Paul and Alice having to witness it as it was for him. Alice had tried impossibly hard to comfort Reb, but nothing worked. Afterward, for two months solid, if anyone said the wrong thing to Reb, he either descended into passive-aggressive ramblings aimed at stupid things a 'certain other band' had done and how 'if they had any idea how angry he was with them...', left the room demanding to be alone, or folded in on himself and murmured self-piteously over just how unfair the industry was to everyone.

Paul was almost shocked that Alice hadn't outright scolded Reb for it, but Alice knew and understood the complexity of what was going on. He knew things that had happened -the horror stories Paul hadn't been there for that he wasn't allowed to be told to spare him trauma -and aside from warning Reb when he got out of hand, he simply let it pass as part of what he was going through.

Then there was the nightmare two months afterward, just a little over a month ago. As he was most nights, Paul had been sharing a room with Reb, who was sick and running a terribly high fever. The nightmare was so intense that Paul woke up to bedsprings squeaking -and jumped out of bed to wake Reb up from it.

_"Reb? Reb!"_

_Reb startled awake with a yelp and went limp with exhaustion on his pillow, flat on his back, arm draped over his face, panting and murmuring in delirium._

_"Oh God, Kip, you don't wanna know what happened..."_

Never would Paul think of that night without feeling his heart hurt. The air hung so cold and stinging in that hotel room, and there was no joke to make for lightening the situation that wouldn't have been unbearably cruel. He'd had to deliver the heavy truth in plain terms, and they'd carried the aftermath that night with help from Alice -who had somehow woken up and come to them just knowing something was wrong, as just one reason why Reb and Paul had both concluded that Alice was an angel in disguise.

_"Reb... Kip's not here. This is Paul you're with. Alice roomed us together, and- ...I'm really sorry."_

Paul had decidedly dubbed that as the hardest thing he'd ever done, alongside dealing with the cathartic aftermath. But from the next day, Reb began coming around, slowly acting more like himself. Now, a month past it, while Paul couldn't say that Reb was Reb Beach from 1988, he was recognizable and approaching what both could accept as the new normal for him.

"Ouch!" Reb knocked into the side of his bed and hit his knee on the footboard. "No fair; it's too crowded in here!"

"Let's go in the hall then," said Paul, breaking his thought train with Reb's complaint.

"Okay, but make sure we take a card with us. And we should really throw the bolt with it open, because I don't know if we can get back in the room with it now." Reb looked on the nightstand. "I'm not sure I like these card keys they keep changing to, and this is just one reason why."

"Alright, look at this." Paul shined his flashlight where the deadbolt piece protruded from the open door, keeping it from shutting in the door frame.

"Cool." Reb followed him out in the hall. He and Paul took turns looking down the opposite ends of the empty hallway with their lights before declaring war on each other again.

_This_ was life on the road as it should be, Paul decided as he and Reb ran around each other, trying to keep up between the light beam duel and the physical one. Having nothing but fun during downtime instead of having to constantly watch out for what people who had no sense of respect might do to them.

"Oh-no!" yelped Reb as he lost his footing in the dark.

"OH-NO!" Paul tried reaching both hands out and turning around in a circle in an attempt to find and catch Reb. But he wasn't in the radius of Paul's arm span, and a thump sounded as he went down on the thin carpet.

"Paul, _no!_ Not that loud!" Reb hissed, only as Paul tripped over his foot and went down with him.

Paul couldn't help it. He pressed his wrist over his mouth and snorted, sobbing with restrained laughter. It wasn't long before Reb was in the same condition, and they lay there in the middle of the hallway floor outside their room, flashlight weapons beside them and still lit up. An attempt to push himself up to a sitting position proved Paul's arms weak as a kitten's legs. That led to an equally heavy laughing fit between him and Reb as they tried with great difficulty to get up.

"Oh my goodness..." Paul finally managed to sit up and helped Reb up too. There, they stayed sitting in the middle of the hallway, recovering.

"Paul," asked Reb, pointing down the hallway after a minute, "what are those lights there?"

Two red dots, very close to each other, and a few feet above the ground were shining in the distance at the end of the hallway. Paul was going to suggest they might have been an emergency exit guide light, except that after a moment's glance, they appeared to be moving very slowly, and they were slightly irregular in shape.

"Is that the cops checking through here?" Paul whispered. "Maybe we'd better get back in the room."

"And what would a cop have that glows red like that?" Reb hissed.

"I don't know, but maybe some sort of night vision goggles that are red instead of green?"

"You would think they'd use a flashlight or lantern instead."

Now there was a visible figure in the dark -something in the shape of two eyes red and glowing with some black sheet hanging down from it. It looked like a combination of a demon, Darth Vader, and just about every other villain in various movies and comics wearing dark hoods that Paul had given up trying to keep track of.

And when the light hit it, it started running down the hall right in their direction.

Paul wasn't sure whether he yelled out before or after Reb started. He couldn't help it, even though he was certain it wasn't going to do them any favors.

"AHHHH!!!"

Just four feet from them, the figure stopped its run and stood menacingly in the dark.

Reb sprang in front of Paul, though he all but flattened his back against his chest and reached one arm behind himself to hold Paul's arm in a death grip, giving away his fear. With his free hand, he held up his flashlight, pointing it to the ceiling with a grip on the handle well positioned to swing for the defense.

"L-look," said Reb, dropping his tone an octave lower to keep his stammer controlled. "I don't know what this is about. Unless it's because we might have been too loud. If it is, that's fair. And we don't have to have a problem. We can go back to our room, and you can go back to your room, and that's it. But if you go after this guy behind me, I'll be fighting back if it's the last thing I do."

Paul gripped on Reb's shoulder, trying to take a few deep breaths to clear his mind without it being audible and giving away his fear. Odds were better than any other night that somebody dangerous had gotten in the hotel, considering the halls were all dark and hotel workers on duty were more than likely attending to elevators, reporting the outage, and other systems keeping the building running rather than watching the front doors.

But as the initial startle and excitement wore off, he was beginning to think otherwise.

The figure stepped forward, holding out a hand toward them in a black glove.

Reb stepped forward abruptly, causing Paul to tumble back down on the ground. As he did, the beam of his flashlight pointed up from a lower angle, revealing what looked to be a long, red handle in the other hand down at the figure's side.

Then, Alice's flashlight -his _red_ flashlight -switched on, lighting up his face as he took off his red light goggles and flipped the dark travel blanket off his head, and Paul immediately began shrieking with laughter on the floor.

"Gotcha!" Alice growled in a low tone, donning an evil grin.

Reb sighed, shook his head, and put his palm over his face.

"Alice," he spoke, panting, shivering, and giggling all at the same time, "You... oh, fuck, you got me _good!"_

Alice's expression softened as he chuckled. "That's what you get for sneaking around out here in the hall with the lights out, but you survived it. Think you're gonna be alright?"

"Yeah, now that I know it's you!"

"See why we don't go running out in the hall at night, Reb?" Paul jokingly scolded up from the floor.

"Don't think I don't realize that you encouraged it, Paul," Alice scolded for real, though the smile held in his voice.

"Aw, Alice!"

"Busted," Reb laughed.

"Yeah, you two will be the ones to keep getting me up at night, I'm sure."

Reb started to say something, presumably to ask if he was in trouble, but Alice held up his hand, only after pulling his glove off.

"That's okay, I like this way of getting up in the middle of the night a lot better."

Reb sighed with relief.

"Yeah," said Paul, "we do too. Even if you did just about scare the crap out of us."

Look, I know what happens onstage doesn't always stay there, but it's too late -or early -for that!" Reb added.

"I agree a hundred percent! You and Paul tell that to each other," said Alice. "Listen, now. You two need to go to bed. If you want to keep the door to the hall open for whatever reason, it can stay that way for tonight, but you gotta go to bed right now. Tomorrow's Friday, so it's a bigger show to be ready for. Don't worry about whether the power's on or not. I'll be getting you all up on time regardless of how late you stay up."

Paul got up from the floor and pulled open the door to their room again.

"How much did you see of that before we saw you?"

"More than you think. We don't run backstage at our shows and you two know why, but sometime we might just get the others in on it and do it again on the bus. The flashlight dueling, because I can't do that again without it being the same. You two would give it away."

"Oh, no," Reb groaned, slipping inside the door with Paul.

"Goodnight, Alice." Paul began to close the door.

"Goodnight." Reb managed to repeat just before it fell and latched shut.

Alice shook his head and sighed contentedly as he draped his fright supplies over his arm and turned to go back to his room down the once again empty and dark hallway.

"Night."


End file.
